stop trying to make "future historians" happen. you can just say you've passed any hope of meaningful justice in this world onto an imagined secular afterlife. that's fine.

Geweldige historici om te volgen in 2026 go.bsky.app/E71xMVM

Ah it's one of those weeks where 'trying to write a book' feels futile in the face of [what in the fresh hell IS this]. I try to maintain the feeling that the world needs a slightly irreverent book about Saint Nicholas more than [what in the fresh hell is THIS] but man oh man it's tough sometimes.

hey remember when a bunch of middle-aged drunk korean lawmakers climbed the locked gates to the national assembly to hold an emergency session after the president gave illegal orders to the military, all of which ended with said president being sentenced to prison

Hé Bluesky, j'ai créé un petit jeu. Il s'appelle Fausse Commune, et il va mettre à l'épreuve ta connaissance des régions françaises. C'est gratuit, c'est absurde, c'est rapide, ça marche sur téléphone ou ordi. C'est là : faussecommune.fr

Offre d’emploi – Postdoctoral Research Associate (University of Kent) rmblf.be/2026/01/02/o...

Good to have an early medieval story for New Year! This time, it's Andy Seaman's @cuhistarchrel.bsky.social excavations at Fonmon Castle. So exciting that he's digging a site of a type I'm currently writing about (or will be when there's time to write!) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Doen: liggend streepje gebruiken Niet doen: AI teksten laten produceren www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...

Damn I hate fireworks so much.

I guess I'm either an unemployed driving instructor or a PR person for the government. For finished books: a retired wizard. For grownup books: a Carolingian bishop I guess... 🤷‍♂️

immer noch das beste Ernst-Jandl-Gedicht.

Because of Reasons, Dutch universities are phasing out English-language BAs for (among others) Psychology and Economics. The reasons are badly argued and informed by the neoliberalesque notion that caving in to xenophobic populism will somehow solve things. #WOinActie www.trouw.nl/opinie/opini...

Publication – « Medieval Women in Letters. Letters by Women, to Women, and about Women in Medieval Literatures », éd. Elisabetta Bartoli rmblf.be/2025/12/31/p...

Publication – Boèce, « Consolation de Philosophie », trad. Jean-Yves Guillaumin rmblf.be/2025/12/31/p...

End sentences with prepositions if you like. The idea that you shouldn't comes almost entirely from Dryden being snarky about Ben Jonson. Like the nonsense taboo on split infinitives, it's based on a snobbish desire to make English sound more like Latin. I'll go with Jonson over Dryden any day.

Back in the day I explained to Martin McCarrick (then in Therapy?, formerly in Siouxsie and the Banshees) how to use the infamous 'Age Coin' (a well-intentioned but ultimately silly attempt to stop teens from smoking) on a cigarette machine in the 013 venue in Tilburg.

My cartoon for the latest @newscientist.com

Conférence – Thibault Pelletier, « La collection Albertini (1282-1493) : découverte, étude et valorisation d’un corpus documentaire exceptionnel » rmblf.be/2025/12/29/c...

RIP Claudia Cardinale. Much like Robert Redford, she was a rare case of a beautiful performer with a filmography full of bangers who did NOT become right-wing later in life. Here she is punching fascist Brigitte Bardot in the face in Les Pétroleuses (1971).

Now more relevant than ever. Remember Gmork.

We had congressional hearings when parents just suspected heavy metal was leading some kids to suicide.

LeMonde said, not on our watch

Say what you will about the Disney #PercyJackson series (I like it) but the end credits are friggin' GORGEOUS and I want it as a poster.

"how management complicity with the marketisation agenda has eroded institutional autonomy and increased intellectual and contractual precarity but also to how academics themselves contribute to perpetuating a system that prioritises individual careerism over more collective scholarly goals."

And as Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.

Professor's pro-tip for anyone with college-age kids: Tell your kids go to class. It's really that simple. If you show up, you'll do okay. You don't have to be smart, you just have to be there. Maybe stay off your phones for 50 minutes. Just listen. You'll absorb something. I have data to prove it.

I wrote a little thing about "Fairytale of New York" and about hope for a better year, but mostly I wanted to share the rendition of the song played at Shane MacGowan's funeral in 2023 because it's so beautiful. Happy Christmas, I love ya baby. dansinker.com/posts/2025-1...

Something that's getting lost in this story is that the "instructor" in question is not a professor with a PhD; she is a Graduate Teaching Assistant, meaning the University of Oklahoma has thrown one of ITS OWN STUDENTS under the bus to appease a right wing grifter who tried to dunk on a trans woman

A nativity scene with something of the Far Side about it #Nativity BnF MS Latin 9386; Evangelia quattuor (the Chartres Gospels); 9th c. (second half?); West of France (Brittany/ Loire?); f.64r @gallicabnf.bsky.social

Saw Home Alone yesterday for a cinema revival thing and 1. It holds up surprisingly well 2. I really remember it as this non-stop barrage of slapstick violence but the whole "home invasion" takes about 10 minutes and the rest is about buying laundry detergent and dealing with Old Man Shovelpants.

When the zombie apocalypse comes, millions of people will run towards the dead, yelling “Eat my brains!”

Some of you have forgotten that only three years ago you were perfectly capable of writing a text, writing an email, telling a bedtime story to a child, and it should worry you that powerful companies have convinced us we can’t do things we’ve been doing since the dawn of time.

Self-examination nothing: y'all need to confront the fact that you owe your academic career to the unique expertise of librarians and archivists. Who do you think organized those LIBRARIES of texts that you're drawing upon?

When will the Dutch king learn Frisian

Ctl+F this

Today in "stuff we take for granted but really shouldn't".

Does anyone have a good assignment to help history survey students understand how bias and context work in our discipline? I'm struggling to get them past "source is worthless because it's bias" to "evaluate the source's perspective using context and use that to help us understand things"

people who are new to academia tend to find its obsession with sources and citations a brake on their "i'm just trying to be CREATIVE, man" mindset. but it turns out the relentless obsession with accuracy, citation, and *provenance* is a load-bearing pillar of the whole enterprise

Still hoping for Whitechapel (the band) to release "A Very Whitechapel Christmas". The perfect mood music for this year's festive season.

Post-doc positions: "Academic freedom is under pressure today. This requires rescue havens of free research. ... [we] invite early career researchers, whose work is restricted due to political pressure in the USA..." uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

Another beer post for the evening: In 1241, Pope Gregory IX informed Archbishop Sigurd Eindridesson (r.1231-52) that children who are baptised in beer can not be considered to have been properly baptised.

New job: 3-year postdoc position in medieval studies University of Southern Denmark jobs.h-net.org/jobs/69652

#PSA: If you feel that #KPopDemonHunters is below your lofty standards for acceptable cultural consumption, you can read Augustine's De Civitate Dei (esp. Book 8) instead. Conversely, if you have no time for Augustine's De Civitate Dei, just watch K-Pop Demon Hunters. Better soundtrack, too.

Offre d’emploi – Postdoctoral Researcher in Social and Economic History (12th-20th Centuries) (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) rmblf.be/2025/12/19/o...

Publication – « L’objet mérovingien. De sa fabrication à sa (re-)découverte », éd. Gaëlle Dumont rmblf.be/2025/12/19/p...

Vacancy: Assistant Professor of Celtic, with a specialism in Old Irish, University of Cambridge. #MedievalSky www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...

In which I promised myself not to get 'political' but I somehow got political.

Gefeliciteerd, Vorige Regering! Het kostte wat tijd maar het is jullie gelukt! Ook fijn om te zien dat de volgende regering deze trend door wil zetten want het moet niet gebeuren dat Nederland ten prooi valt aan linkse hobbies als [checkt notities] eerlijkheid en compassie. nos.nl/artikel/2594...

The Carolingians Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Germany; Ms. lat. fol. 295; Ekkehard of Aura (Ekkehardus Uraugiensis), Chronicon Universale; 12th century; f.80v mirador.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de?manifest=htt...